Astrophage

Billy, James, and Konstantin got together to make a game. Their first idea featured a horrible monster that wanted to know what it’s like to be human. But eventually their game Astrophage turned into a top-down shooter in which you are a ship attacking a planet with a corrupted heart at its core. When the heart beats, enemies spawn. The player must kill the enemies to open ventricles to travel further into the planet to destroy the heart.

The game is inspired by Harry Kleiner’s Fantastic Voyage, Top-down and Metroid-vanian shooter, Evil Planet and lots of other creepy art. At the time of the interview Billy thinks that the project is going really well. He has no big concerns. There’s a lot of hardcoding, but everything is going well. James agrees that the project is going well, but believes hardcoding isn’t fun. Konstantin’s only concern is that he’s not sure when he’ll get to sleep. He also wants to always improve art aspects, but realizes that won’t change.